New Start: Ratify, With Caveats

The treaty helpfully reinstates on-site verification of Russian nuclear forces, but senators should make it clear to Moscow that they don't see it as limiting U.S. missile defenses.

By

Condoleezza Rice

Updated Dec. 7, 2010 12:01 am ET

When U.S. President Bush and Russian President Putin signed the Moscow Treaty in 2002, they addressed the nuclear threat by reducing offensive weapons, as their predecessors had. But the Moscow Treaty was different. It came in the wake of America's 2001 withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, and for the first time the United States and Russia reduced their offensive nuclear weapons with no agreement in place that constrained missile defenses.